St. Patrick's Day 2010 TR: part 1

I hope all of you loyal readers thoroughly enjoyed your Saint Patrick’s Day’s festivities. Whether you drank yourself silly the whole day or just wore a green shirt to work I hope the day was grand. If I had only one word to sum up my Saint Patrick’s Day 2010, it would be, smooth. Everything went well, no drama, no hiccups, and no laws broken. The wife and I went to Baltimore to frequent some of their Irish pubs (I didn’t lay out logistics as well as I should have, so more comprehensive return trip is certainly in order). We hadn’t been to Balto in while, and we really enjoyed ourselves, just a great town.

Now I want to digress for a moment to address what I think is an interesting new problem. Which of your beloved techo-toys do you trust more? It sounds like a quiz show. You see, my wife doesn’t like the fact that I’m a typical man in that I drive by feel and don’t stop and ask for directions. I’m happy to waste time driving around in aimless circles, like an old-school cabbie running up your fare, rather than ask for help. However, I will print out online directions when going to an unfamiliar location. The last time we went somewhere, I went off-script from the Google directions because I thought I knew better, and we got lost. For this trip, I planned to follow the Google directions to the letter and not improvise. As we get closer to Baltimore my wife starts plotting our course into the GPS feature on her phone. It turns out that her Sprint phone has a different route in mind for us than the Google directions. So, we have two technologies having a digital difference of opinion. What to do? My wife wanted to go with her GPS course, but I stubbornly insisted on sticking with the Google plan. No improvisation, remember? We got to our destination without incident, but it seems that if we followed the GPS, we would have gotten there quicker and without the detour through some of Baltimore’s scenic urban blight. So I decided to follow the map, and still wound up being, well, not wrong, but wrong-ish. Sometimes, you just can’t win.

Back to business then. The weather was gorgeous, so we parked the car and did all of our bar-hopping on foot. The amount of walking we did certainly contributed to my inability to maintain a buzz. Unlike my trip to Philly’s South street last Saint Patrick’s Day, where there’s an Irish pub just about every 30 feet. Even holding to a one-drink-per-bar guideline (a loose guideline at that) I was trashed before we went 5 blocks in Philadelphia. Since Balto’s Irish bars are more spread out, my legs got the workout rather than my liver. We started at Mick O’Shea’s, which is a great place. It had it all: great selection, good service, solid décor, and craic to spare. Mick’s is a top-notch Irish pub that I’m really looking forward to visiting again. And I finally got to try Paddy’s Irish whiskey! Paddy’s has gotten a bit of a cult following in the States (paging Rich Nagle of irishwhiskeyblog.com) primarily because it’s good, and has only just become available for distribution in America. The only way to get your hands on Paddy was through foreign purchase or at a duty-free shop. The taste couldn’t live up to the hype, but it is good whiskey, smooth and savory. I will do more detailed reviews of both Mick’s and Paddy’s in future posts.

After leaving Mick’s, we hoofed it almost a mile to the harbor to try out Tir Na Nog. It’s a grand-looking place with a great selection of whiskey. However, their prices are a bit steep. A Harp draft and a Tullamore Dew 12 neat cost me 19 bucks. Compare those prices to the $7 I paid at Mick’s for a draft of Sam and a Paddy’s. TD 12 is a better grade of whiskey than Paddy’s, but it’s not that much better. I feel like I fell right into a tourist trap, but I guess it’s carpe diem when you’re spending money in Baltimore’s main tourist attraction. Putting the drink prices aside, I wasn’t a fan of Tir Na Nog; it had a good look but it had a weirdly antiseptic quality. No craic to speak of, and if you can’t manage some craic on Saint Paddy’s Day, then you’re failing somehow as an Irish pub. It wasn’t a bad place, but I have no desire to make a return visit (even if someone else is buying the drinks).

I’ll leave the trip report at that for now, dear readers. Part two will be coming soon, featuring more boozing and an encounter with a drunk guy using giveaway bar swag in a vulgar, but amusing, manner. Slainte!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? paddythepublican@gmail.com